Media

Al-Jazeera – how Arabic news channel became a key player in global media  
The Guardian, 20 Sep 2011

Pioneering TV station credited with aiding Arab spring and opening up political debate in the Middle East

Journalism court threat to Iraqi media
Comment Is Free, 25 Jul 2010

Iraq's proposed new journalism court is a further blow to the country's already oppressed media

Shock of the new media
Comment Is Free, 16 Jul 2009

As Fatah shuts down al-Jazeera in the West Bank, other anxious administrations are cracking down on Middle East media

Family confirms blogger's arrest 
Comment Is Free, 10 Dec 2008

Blogger and Cif contributor Hossein Derakhshan disappeared in Iran on November 1. His family say he was arrested

Derakhshan 'confesses' 
Comment Is Free, 20 Nov 2008

The blogger reportedly arrested in Iran appears to be spilling the beans on dissidents living in the west

The Derakhshan mystery 
Comment Is Free, 19 Nov 2008

Amid reports of his arrest, the Iranian blogger has been silent on the internet since November 1

Arrested in Tehran 
Comment Is Free, 18 Nov 2008

Iranian authorities have reportedly arrested blogger and Cif contributor Hossein Derakhshan

Posthumously yours
Comment Is Free, Aug 15 2008

Filmmaker Youssef Chahine is yet another artist whom the Egyptian state finds more palatable dead than alive

Found in translation  
Comment Is Free, November 21, 2007 

A new initiative to translate important books into Arabic has announced the first 100 titles - and its a pretty good start

The battle for control  
Comment Is Free, June 7, 2007

An event last night discussed why some people dislike the internet. Yet it is not the web itself that they fear, but what others can do with it.

The value of trash TV 
Comment Is Free, May 22, 2007

Reality television may be thought of as lightweight in this country but elsewhere it can be a platform for subversion.

Arabic under fire  
Comment Is Free, May 15, 2007

A child on Hamas TV talked of annihilating the Jews ... or did she?

Blog and be damned 
Comment Is Free, April 11, 2007

Today's argument over the tone of online debate would be familiar to the pamphleteers of 18th-century Britain.

Found in translation 
Comment Is Free, April 4, 2007 

Online language tools are a wonderful development, making Arabic newspapers and other writing on the internet far more accessible.

Bush's historian  
Comment Is Free, May 2, 2006

The tributes to Bernard Lewis, the man who coined the term 'clash of civilisations', fail to convey how controversial he is.

Call to reinstate papers closed in cartoon row 
The Guardian, February 11 2006

Press freedom groups yesterday urged the Yemeni government to reinstate three independent newspapers - the Yemen Observer, al-Hurriya (Freedom) and al-Ra'i al-A'am (Public Opinion) - which were closed after reprinting the controversial Danish cartoons.

Drawn conclusions 
The Guardian, February 07 2006

In one of the less-reported protests against you-know-what, thousands of Yemeni women marched through the streets of Sana'a on February 1 with banners saying "Boykot Danish products".

Same news, different perspective 
The Guardian, February 06 2006

Presidential Room 5, Sheraton Hotel, Doha. The doyen of chatshow hosts has just flown in to Qatar and for once it is his turn to face the interviewers' questions. Hello and welcome to Sir David Frost.

Cartoons herald return of cinema to Saudi Arabia 
The Guardian, October 19 2005

After an absence of about 20 years, cinema will make a tentative return to Saudi Arabia next month with a screening of cartoons for an audience of women and children. A one-hour programme of foreign cartoons dubbed into Arabic will be shown at a hotel

How Homer became Omar 
The Guardian, October 17 2005

They're a famously dysfunctional family from small-town America but suddenly they have all learned Arabic and started talking like Egyptians.

Language matters 
Guardian Unlimited, September 28 2005

The idea of a "mysterious" east has been around for centuries, and even today there is nothing more mysterious for the average westerner than an Arabic newspaper with its squiggly back-to-front writing.

Egyptian censors block magazine  
The Guardian, August 12 2005

Egyptian censors have blocked sales of a news magazine that shows on its cover plainclothes security forces preparing to attack pro-democracy demonstrators.

Weakening grip 
The Guardian, July 01 2005 

Oh dear! These are difficult times for the control freaks who run Egypt's media. Amid continuing demonstrations against President Mubarak and the lectures from Washington about freedom and democracy, they are struggling to keep their grip.

Egypt under fire for censorship 
The Guardian, June 09 2005 

The Egyptian government is stifling academic freedom in universities by censoring course books, preventing research into controversial issues and intimidating student activists, Human Rights Watch says in a report published today.

Arabsats get the MEMRI treatment 
Transnational Broadcasting Studies journal, Spring 2005

A look at MEMRI's move into TV monitoring. 

World's news channels play to prejudices 
The Guardian, January 31 2005

In the studios at Fox News, Rupert Murdoch's American channel, they could scarcely contain their joy at the "incredible" reports that voter turnout in Iraq had reached 95% "in some areas".

Al-Jazeera has made news in Arabic ... now it hopes to make its mark in English 
The Guardian, September 02 2004

The Arab satellite station Al-Jazeera, denounced and bombed by the US and banned by the Iraqi government, has begun recruiting staff for a channel in English that will show news and documentaries.

When worlds collide
The Guardian, July 22 2004

Just before the war in Iraq, when journalists were rushing off to become embedded with the military, Jehane Noujaim, an Arab- American film director, decided to embed herself among journalists. She arrived with a couple of mini-DV cameras in Qatar ...

.iq test 
The Guardian, July 05 2004

A new battle for control of Iraq is looming - this time on the world wide web ...

Reality TV grips and enrages Arab world 
The Guardian, March 02 2004

It seemed the ideal formula for reality TV: Blind Date meets Big Brother.

Getting a bad press
The Guardian, June 23 2003

Among the more interesting by-products of the collapse of law and order in Iraq is a sudden free-for-all in newspaper publishing. New titles appear almost every day. Najaf - a town with slightly more than 300,000 inhabitants - now has some 30 newspapers...

Censor sensibility 
The Guardian, May 19 2003

From black marker pens to an internet crackdown, Saudi efforts to control the media are flawed and doomed to fail ...

Fury at US as attacks kill three journalists
The Guardian, April 09 2003

The Arab satellite television channel al-Jazeera is to pull its reporters out of Iraq after one of them was killed during a US air raid on Baghdad.

Television agendas shape images of war
The Guardian, March 27 2003

Al-Jazeera causes outcry with broadcast of battle casualties
The Guardian, March 24 2003

Al-Jazeera, the Arab satellite channel which angered the United States with its coverage of the Afghan war, has caused a new furore by broadcasting blood-and-guts images from the invasion of Iraq.

Battle station
The Guardian, February 07 2003

The show is over for another week and Faisal al-Qassem, the hottest property in Arab television, emerges from the basement studio with his guests. There is no hospitality suite at al-Jazeera television, so he commandeers the editor-in-chief's office, where there is just about enough room for three people to spread out and relax. Someone enters with a tray of coffee, trips and spills it.

MEMRI debate: Yigal Carmon and Brian Whitaker 
The Guardian, January 28 2003

The papers that cried wolf
The Guardian, December 16 2002

Last week brought yet another terrifying headline from an American newspaper: "US suspects al-Qaida got nerve agent from Iraqis".

Poisoning the air
The Guardian, December 09 2002

One of the oldest tricks in the run-up to a war is to spread terrifying stories of things that the enemy may be about to do. Government officials plant these tales, journalists water them and the public, for the most part, swallow them.

BBC in press freedom row with Israel
The Guardian, October 19 2002

The BBC has become embroiled in a dispute about accreditation for Palestinian journalists covering the Middle East conflict, a further souring of relations between international media organisations and the Israeli authorities.

Selective Memri
The Guardian, August 12 2002

MEMRI, the 'independent' media institute that translates the Arabic newspapers is quite what it seems. See also reply by Yigal Carmon and the MEMRI debate.

Lost in translation
The Guardian, June 10 2002

Searching the BBC's vast website for articles about Colonel Gadafy recently, I found just three mentions of his name.

Arabs hatch media plan to 'face the westerners'
The Guardian, October 30 2001

Three new satellite TV channels may soon be broadcasting to Europe and the United States, courtesy of the Arab Gulf states, who seem eager to blow hundreds of millions of pounds on the project.

Battle station
The Guardian, October 09 2001

As the bombs fell on Afghanistan on Sunday night, Mohammed Kicham, the Qatar-based anchorman of al-Jazeera television, was talking to camera when a voice came through his earpiece. "Mohammed," it said, "you're now on CNN... and BBC...

The truth isn't out there
The Guardian, May 14 2001

No Arab country has such a wealth of news media as Lebanon. For a population of only 3.5 million people, there are eight TV stations (several with more than one channel), 12 daily newspapers and some 60 magazines.

Israel wins war of words
The Guardian, April 09 2001

A familiar tale from the Middle East: "Palestinians launched three bombs overnight against the Eile Sinai settlement in the far north of the Gaza Strip. Israeli troops responded with tank shells, destroying a Palestinian border post and hitting two houses."

Israeli website mixes fact and fantasy
The Guardian, April 03 2001

Scanning the news on the internet at the weekend, I was alarmed to see at the top of the list a headline saying: "Talonsoft announces Arab-Israeli Wars".

Cartoonist gives Syria a new line in freedom
The Guardian, April 03 2001

Politics has never been much fun in Syria, but the cartoonist Ali Farzat believes that jokes are the way to bring about reform.

Arab politicians eye up makeover
The Guardian, July 16 2001

On a recent visit to London, the Syrian foreign minister, Farouk al-Sharaa, held a press conference. Although originally scheduled to take place in a penthouse suite at one of the best hotels, it was moved at the last minute to a room in the cellar.

War games on the net: but this time it's for real 
November 30 2000

It's a war where nobody gets killed and almost anyone can join in - the Middle East cyber-war

Unity through intifada and satellite TV  
November 17 2000

From London to the Gulf, the intifada has given the Islamic world the sense of belonging they have spent years trying to achieve by other means ...